About+Staff

=About Staff= I was not sure where to place this information, so here will do....

I think it is important for teachers to talk to their students about where they have come from and what it is they want to do with the class for the year.

So i'll start with the last part first. For me my goal is to make you the best teacher that you can be and for you to be confident in working in your chosen area. So I see my role at uni as more of a facilitator and as you get to know me a mentor. I base my uni teaching approach on past experience working in schools, industry and medical sector.

What follows is a blurb about me and another blurb about some of my work.

ATB

daz

About Darren I am currently a tenured lecturer teaching ICT, Multiliteracies and Foundation (Professional) Studies in the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania, Australia. My background is that of a Research Fellow and clinician in the health sector, ICT consultant and educator. My research interest is in the management of change processes with a particular interest in the micro-meso-macro level relationships between technology innovations and human-machine (humachine) interactions. I have published internationally in refereed journals, invited book chapters, edited books and locally in professional association newsletters, journals, and conferences. I currently referee several journals including the //Graduate Journal of Social Science//; //Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood// //(CIEC)//, //International Journal of Education and Development using ICT// and the suite of publications produced by the Australian College of Educators.

Current research interests and PhD studies are in the role that STS (Science and Technological Studies) play in contributing to our understanding of ICT and organisational change, particularly exploring socio-technical phenomena relating to the implementation and use of information and communication technologies. I have worked as an academic and practitioner, focusing on how to integrate ICT development and organisational change, especially within formal and continuing education. To that end my field of study and practice has centred on working with multi-professional teams including practitioners, managers, and ICT technicians in affecting integrated organisational development and change.

My academic teaching practice has been recognised by being awarded a University of Tasmania individual-category teaching merit certificate in 2008. Whilst in 2007 I was awarded a University of Tasmania team teaching merit certificate with Mick Le Rossignol, one of four team teaching awards presented by the University that year.

Fluck, A., Pullen, D. & Harper, C. (2009). Case study of a computer-based examination system//.// //Australian Journal of Educational Technology// 25(4). Available online: http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet25/fluck.html Marlow, A., McCann, D. & Pullen, D. (2008). The use of online discussion areas to enhance the practicum experience of undergraduate nursing students: The experience of one Australian University. //Australian// //College// //of Educators//. Online reference: http://www.austcolled.com.au/articlepurchase/use-online-discussion-areas-enhance-practicum-experience-undergraduated-nursing-stud
 * Selected associated works: **

Pullen, D., Baguley, M. & Marsden, A. (2009). Back to Basics: Electronic Collaboration in the Education Sector. In J. Salmons &. L. Wilson (Eds). // The Handbook of Research on Electronic Collaboration and Organizational Synergy // (pp. 205-222). Hershey: PA, Idea Group Reference Inc. Online reference: http://www.igi-global.com/reference/details.asp?ID=8003

Pullen, D. (2009). Technoethics in education and society. In R. Luppicini & R. Adell (Eds). // Handbook of Research on Technoethics // (pp. 680-699). Hershey: PA, Idea Group Global. Online reference: http://www.igi-global.com/reference/details.asp?ID=7968

Darren Pullen University of Tasmania Faculty of Education Locked Bag 1307, Launceston Tasmania, Australia 7250 Room: Launceston A230a Phone + 61 3 6324 3037 Fax + 61 3 6324 3048 Email: Darren.Pullen@utas.edu.au Academic web site: http://fcms.its.utas.edu.au/educ/educ/pagedetails.asp?lpersonId=3583 Research web site: http://rmdb.research.utas.edu.au/public/rmdb?indiv_detail_warp_trans+9614 Consultancy web site: http://www.humachine.com.au
 * Contact details: **

Digital technologies are now prevalent in many aspects of day-to-day public and private life. To be a ‘digital participant’ in the context of such changes and the debates shaping them means making informed use of information and communication technology (ICT) in one’s own life. It means recognising how technology offers opportunities for people to participate in new kinds of social activities, civic life, learning and work, and it also means recognising that technology use must be challenged and questioned rather than accepted passively. For children and young people, already growing up in a world in which technologies are an everyday and familiar presence, it is especially important for them to become informed and educated digital participants, equipped with the capacities to be active in interpreting the world around them. It is also equally important for us as adults and educators to be equally as informed, perhaps more so for the latter. Formal education has a key part to play in preparing young people to participate in social life, learning and working in this increasingly technology driven globalised economy. Just as school subjects provide young people with the knowledge and skills to make sense of their world - including its history, geography, religions, arts, languages and sciences - education should also supply the skills and knowledge to make sense of this digital world. This is more substantial than claiming that schools need to make use of ICT to sustain the engagement and motivation of learners. It recognises that accessing information and knowledge through diverse technological forms affects learning itself. That is why it is becoming increasingly important to identify how digital technologies can be synthesised into school subjects, not as tools to make learning more efficient, but as resources that have the capacity to change the nature of what it means to learn. The challenge is, then, to find ways of adapting and modifying the curriculum and teaching practice to meet learners’ up-and-coming needs in the emerging digital and globalised context, rather than just to integrate technology into the existing curriculum in order to ensure relevance or boost standards. If we view the school curriculum as a set of skills, knowledge and understanding organised to prepare young people for a productive and purposeful personal and civic life then it follows logically that the curriculum must respond to the challenges and opportunities that technology may provide. All 3 books draw on the work of local, national and international theorist and practitioners in fields ranging from literacy education, the arts, pedagogy, curriculum design, school reform and ICT, through to practising classroom teachers. Whilst each book has a specific intent they are all related by our desire to question fundamental notions of learning in the digital world across the domains of education, society and the nexus between theory and practice. For today’s purpose; to keep things simple, the terms ‘**literacy’** in traditional terms means being able to speak, read and write in the shared language of a culture. ‘ ** Technoliteracy’ ** shares some similarities. It refers to the reading and writing of digital texts, for example being able to ‘read’ a website by navigating through hyperlinks and ‘writing’ by uploading digital photos to a social networking site. In this sense, technoliteracy means the functional skills required to operate and communicate with technology. It also refers to the knowledge of how technologies affect the world. In an ever expanding digital landscape of information sources, communication opportunities, and tools for creating digital objects, teaching and learning cannot be confined to pen and paper activities. This means that learners and teachers need to make sense of how technologies can be used within subjects and to understand how such technologies affect what we know about those subjects. This is where a framework for using ICT is required. Step-in multiliteracies. The concept of ‘**multiliteracies’** acknowledges that in a rapidly changing, culturally and linguistically diverse society we need to use texts in critical, active and reflective ways. It also acknowledges that literacy goes beyond print language and incorporates the multiple modes of meaning found in new information and communication technologies. These complex texts incorporate elements of linguistic, visual, spatial, audio and gestural design. Focusing on the development of children’s literacy in a digital age therefore means that teachers are seeking to make more overt the ways in which technologies transform learners’ engagement with subject content. It may also help teachers to find creative, effective and engaging ways to deliver the curriculum.  Pullen, D. & Cole, D [1]. (Eds.). (2009). // Multiliteracies and Technology enhanced Education: Social Practice and the Global Classroom //. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Looks at how teachers and theorists across the globe are using technology to transform educational practices and policies. By doing so these individuals are not only transforming their own practice they are fundamentally challenging the notion of learning and assessment in a digital age. Through their application of a multiliteracies framework they are reconceptualising the ways in which pedagogy and educational power are being redistributed in the context of technology use – thus empowering learners to take more control and accountability for their own learning and moving the traditional language-based approach to literacy to one that recognises the multiplicity of communication channels that increasingly cater for cultural, linguistic and technological diversity. Pullen, D., Baguley, M [2]. & Gitaski, C [3]. (Eds.) (2009). //Technoliteracy, Discourse and Social Practice: Frameworks and Applications in the Digital Age//. Hershey, PA : Information Science Reference. Examines educational and social practices using a range of literacies to communicate and learn with. To produce productive citizens’ the education systems need to prepare multi-literate students, by providing educational experiences that embrace different literacy modes such as linguistic, visual, auditory, gestural and spatial. Such an approach moves literacy from purely text and rules to one that embraces the technology that students are currently using to communicate with 24/7 anywhere/anytime. Therefore literacy education moves from being mono-literate (text) to multi-literate (linguistic, visual, auditory, gestural and spatial). Cole, D.& Pullen, D. (Eds.). (2009). // Multiliteracies in Motion: Current Theory and Practice //. New York: Routledge. Is perhaps for an academic audience more prestigious (well in management’s eyes) than the other 2 titles in that the latter are more concerned with theory in practice (and so are perhaps more palatable for teachers and bureaucrats). This title is more concerned with unpacking the original framework of multiliteracies and expanding on the theory to produce revamped theories and in some cases proposing new theories. For example taking a Deleuzian [4] approach David Cole and I looked at young people’s use of technology, in particular their agency (or power relationships), and how this accounted for their use of particular social networking technology such as Facebook. Such approaches help researchers to understand what technology is being used and for what purposes, enabling technology designers and educators to better match technology to user needs. What these findings typically reveal is that technology brings with it intended and unintended consequences. For instance a mobile phone can be used to make voice calls-its intended design, and short text messaging-an original after thought which designers believed would not catch on. Now mobile phones contain cameras, video recorders, office applications, GPS, music players, game players and many more features-most of which get used more than the voice capability of the device. Through understanding the functions of the device educators can then work on making better educational uses of devices that students are currently using to communicate and learn with. For instance using the camera function of mobile phones to record pictures for a science field trip or utilising the GPS capability in a geography lesson. What each book and my own practice is trying to do is to challenge individuals and governments to question the need for a back to ‘basics’ approach to education to one that opens the doors for new ways of teaching and learning which may or may not be enhanced by technology-it is simply a question of exploring the possibilities that new technologies may offer. However this is easier said that done, even within my own university, as it challenges the existing beliefs of “experts” whilst working in institutions which have not changed their basic premises for more than a century, despite opening their doors to new technology. And UTas like many, if not most, other educational establishments not unique in this. Our fundamental hope in bringing together these 3 books is to have theorists, educators and policy makers re-examine theory and practice in the hope that new insights will be made in terms of pedagogy, professional development and school renewal. And a multiliteracies framework is just one way that can guide educational practices to facilitate culturally and socially relevant experiences in a digital world whilst also re-contextualising what it means to be literate in the digital age. In summary all 3 books argue for: ·  the need for schools to engage with multiple literacies and multiple technologies; ·  the need to know more about the informal ways children (students) learn outside of school; ·  the need to replace instructional pedagogies with open-ended learning processes aimed not at transmitting knowledge, but at interpreting and creating new kinds of information for new social futures that can incorporate all the diversities the world and the digital age can offer, and ·  the need to assist teachers, who are caught between the tides of government interventions and a fundamentally ‘back to basics’ approach to a world of ‘what ifs’ to engage students with technology that will equip them to operate and live in a digital environment and to be passionate and proactive lifelong learners. Such challenges or changes require reconceptualising the values, aims and purposes of education and the traditional roles of the teacher and student; together with reconfiguring the physical and virtual school environment. And to be blunt the education sector and politicians still have a LONG WAY to go before this sector capitalises on the technology revolution that has fundamentally changed the health and business sector and for most of us our own leisure and socialisation time. For instance the Commonwealth Government’s notion of literacy has not changed over the past 18 years: “ Effective literacy is intrinsically purposeful, flexible and dynamic and involves the integration of speaking, listening and critical thinking with reading and writing. [5] ” Such a narrow definition does an injustice to what literacy is and what it means to be literate in the 21st century, which is highly dependant on technology and global communication.
 * Darren Pullen –University of Tasmania, Faculty of Education Book Launch, November 26, 2009 **

[1] David Cole is a senior lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney in the area of English and pedagogy. [2] Margaret Baguley is a senior lecture at the University of Southern Queensland in the area of Arts education. [3] Christina Gitsaki is the UNESCO chair in applied research in education currently in the United Arab Emirates. [4] French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) is one of the most important philosophers of the 20th Century. His ideas have influenced fields as diverse as architecture, science, economics and the arts, and are increasingly being taken up in social research and practice. Deleuzian thought allows individual voices to be heard across space and time whilst also indicating the individual’s agency (power) within the event being studied. [5] DEET. (1991). Australia’s language. The Australian language and literacy policy. Companion volume to the policy paper. Canberra, ACT: Commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Training. p. 5